Knife Fight, the movie co-penned by San Francisco-based Democratic political consultant, Chris Lehane — and described as “a rough take on dirty politics” — premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival to wild tabloid coverage.

And here’s why we really care: it’s about California politics, it was shot mostly in the Bay Area, and it features the movie debut (we won’t say acting debut, he’s a political consultant) of GOP operative Steve Schmidt — not to mention the crowd of CA journos and pols who appear as extras.

The film directed by Bill Guttentag, which we first reported on last June, stars Rob Lowe as Paul Turner, the Chris-Lehane-like maverick political slugger — a take-no-prisoners type who has to juggle sex scandals, candidates while skillfully handling the media in California.

Check the latest trailer:

Reviews already coming in: The Wrap’s Leah Rozen asked, “Have you been missing West Wing?” and said the movie was “a nostalgic kick” for political junkies.

And Screen Daily’s David D’arcy said the film contains a massage scene that “comes so close to a reported event involving Al Gore that we can guess that Gore’s Current TV won’t be an outlet for Knife Fight.” (Lehane was the spokesman for Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, as well as for the Clinton White House. He’s pictured at below right with director Guttentag and actress Jaime Chung during the “Knife Fight” shoot in Los Altos Hills.)

Now that the New York in-crowd has seen it, NorCal’s political junkie demographic is collectively holding its breath for the West Coast premiere. A whole gaggle of area journalists — including yours truly, Sac Bee’s Dan Moraine, the SJ Merc’s Dana Hull, and more — served as extras for the film during a day shoot at Treasure Island not long ago. (We were directed to jostle each other and shout questions at Schmidt. Uh, no big dramatic stretch.)

But hey, looks like the perfect year to release this kind of flick: Election 2012 is already chock full of strategists on both sides who know how — in Lehane’s own words — to “bring a gun to a knife fight.”
Stay tuned.